'I am not very willing that any language should be totally extinguished;
the similitude and derivation of languages afford the most indubitable proof
of the traduction of nations, and the genealogy of mankind; they add often
physical certainty to historical evidence of ancient migrations, and of the
revolutions of ages which left no written monuments behind them.' - JOHNSON.

THE Gypsy dialect of Spain is at present very much shattered and broken,
being rather the fragments of the language which the Gypsies brought with
them from the remote regions of the East than the language itself: it enables,
however, in its actual state, the Gitanos to hold conversation amongst
themselves, the import of which is quite dark and mysterious to those who
are not of their race, or by some means have become acquainted with their
vocabulary. The relics of this tongue, singularly curious in themselves,
must be ever particularly interesting to the philological antiquarian, inasmuch
as they enable him to arrive at a satisfactory conclusion respecting the
origin of the Gypsy race. During the later part of the last century, the
curiosity of some learned individuals, particularly Grellmann, Richardson,
and Marsden, induced them to collect many words of the Romanian language,
as spoken in Germany, Hungary, and England, which, upon analysing, they
discovered to be in general either pure Sanscrit or Hindustani words, or
modifications thereof; these investigations have been continued to the present
time by men of equal curiosity and no less erudition, the result of which
has been the establishment of the fact, that the Gypsies of those countries
are the descendants of a tribe of Hindus who for some particular reason had
abandoned their native country. In England, of late, the Gypsies have excited
particular attention; but a desire far more noble and laudable than mere
antiquarian curiosity has given rise to it, namely, the desire of propagating
the glory of Christ amongst those who know Him not, and of saving souls from
the jaws of the infernal wolf. It is, however, with the Gypsies of Spain,
and not with those of England and other countries, that we are now occupied,
and we shall merely mention the latter so far as they may serve to elucidate
the case of the Gitanos, their brethren by blood and language. Spain for
many centuries has been the country of error; she has mistaken stern and
savage tyranny for rational government; base, low, and grovelling superstition
for clear, bright, and soul-ennobling religion; sordid cheating she has
considered as the path to riches; vexatious persecution as the path to power;
and the consequence has been, that she is now poor and powerless, a pagan
amongst the pagans, with a dozen kings, and with none. Can we be surprised,
therefore, that, mistaken in policy, religion, and moral conduct, she should
have fallen into error on points so naturally dark and mysterious as the
history and origin of those remarkable people whom for the last four hundred
years she has supported under the name of Gitanos? The idea entertained at
the present day in Spain respecting this race is, that they are the descendants
of the Moriscos who remained in Spain, wandering about amongst the mountains
and wildernesses, after the expulsion of the great body of the nation from
the country in the time of Philip the Third, and that they form a distinct
body, entirely unconnected with the wandering tribes known in other countries
by the names of Bohemians, Gypsies, etc. This, like all unfounded opinions,
of course originated in ignorance, which is always ready to have recourse
to conjecture and guesswork, in preference to travelling through the long,
mountainous, and stony road of patient investigation; it is, however, an
error far more absurd and more destitute of tenable grounds than the ancient
belief that the Gitanos were Egyptians, which they themselves have always
professed to be, and which the original written documents which they brought
with them on their first arrival in Western Europe, and which bore the signature
of the king of Bohemia, expressly stated them to be. The only clue to arrive
at any certainty respecting their origin, is the language which they still
speak amongst themselves; but before we can avail ourselves of the evidence
of this language, it will be necessary to make a few remarks respecting the
principal languages and dialects of that immense tract of country, peopled
by at least eighty millions of human beings, generally known by the name
of Hindustan, two Persian words tantamount to the land of Ind, or, the land
watered by the river Indus.

The most celebrated of these languages is the Sanskrida, or, as it is known
in Europe, the Sanscrit, which is the language of religion of all those nations
amongst whom the faith of Brahma has been adopted; but though the language
of religion, by which we mean the tongue in which the religious books of
the Brahmanic sect were originally written and are still preserved, it has
long since ceased to be a spoken language; indeed, history is silent as to
any period when it was a language in common use amongst any of the various
tribes of the Hindus; its knowledge, as far as reading and writing it went,
having been entirely confined to the priests of Brahma, or Brahmans, until
within the last half-century, when the British, having subjugated the whole
of Hindustan, caused it to be openly taught in the colleges which they
established for the instruction of their youth in the languages of the country.
Though sufficiently difficult to acquire, principally on account of its
prodigious richness in synonyms, it is no longer a sealed language, - its
laws, structure, and vocabulary being sufficiently well known by means of
numerous elementary works, adapted to facilitate its study. It has been
considered by famous philologists as the mother not only of all the languages
of Asia, but of all others in the world. So wild and preposterous an idea,
however, only serves to prove that a devotion to philology, whose principal
object should be the expansion of the mind by the various treasures of learning
and wisdom which it can unlock, sometimes only tends to its bewilderment,
by causing it to embrace shadows for reality. The most that can be allowed,
in reason, to the Sanscrit is that it is the mother of a certain class or
family of languages, for example, those spoken in Hindustan, with which most
of the European, whether of the Sclavonian, Gothic, or Celtic stock, have
some connection. True it is that in this case we know not how to dispose
of the ancient Zend, the mother of the modern Persian, the language in which
were written those writings generally attributed to Zerduscht, or Zoroaster,
whose affinity to the said tongues is as easily established as that of the
Sanscrit, and which, in respect to antiquity, may well dispute the palm with
its Indian rival. Avoiding, however, the discussion of this point, we shall
content ourselves with observing, that closely connected with the Sanscrit,
if not derived from it, are the Bengali, the high Hindustani, or grand popular
language of Hindustan, generally used by the learned in their intercourse
and writings, the languages of Multan, Guzerat, and other provinces, without
mentioning the mixed dialect called Mongolian Hindustani, a corrupt jargon
of Persian, Turkish, Arabic, and Hindu words, first used by the Mongols,
after the conquest, in their intercourse with the natives. Many of the principal
languages of Asia are totally unconnected with the Sanscrit, both in words
and grammatical structure; these are mostly of the great Tartar family, at
the head of which there is good reason for placing the Chinese and Tibetian.

Bearing the same analogy to the Sanscrit tongue as the Indian dialects specified
above, we find the Rommany, or speech of the Roma, or Zincali, as they style
themselves, known in England and Spain as Gypsies and Gitanos. This speech,
wherever it is spoken, is, in all principal points, one and the same, though
more or less corrupted by foreign words, picked up in the various countries
to which those who use it have penetrated. One remarkable feature must not
be passed over without notice, namely, the very considerable number of Sclavonic
words, which are to be found embedded within it, whether it be spoken in
Spain or Germany, in England or Italy; from which circumstance we are led
to the conclusion, that these people, in their way from the East, travelled
in one large compact body, and that their route lay through some region where
the Sclavonian language, or a dialect thereof, was spoken. This region I
have no hesitation in asserting to have been Bulgaria, where they probably
tarried for a considerable period, as nomad herdsmen, and where numbers of
them are still to be found at the present day. Besides the many Sclavonian
words in the Gypsy tongue, another curious feature attracts the attention
of the philologist - an equal or still greater quantity of terms from the
modern Greek; indeed, we have full warranty for assuming that at one period
the Spanish section, if not the rest of the Gypsy nation, understood the
Greek language well, and that, besides their own Indian dialect, they
occasionally used it for considerably upwards of a century subsequent to
their arrival, as amongst the Gitanos there were individuals to whom it was
intelligible so late as the year 1540.

Where this knowledge was obtained it is difficult to say, - perhaps in Bulgaria,
where two-thirds of the population profess the Greek religion, or rather
in Romania, where the Romaic is generally understood; that they DID understand
the Romaic in 1540, we gather from a very remarkable work, called EL ESTUDIOSO
CORTESANO, written by Lorenzo Palmireno: this learned and highly extraordinary
individual was by birth a Valencian, and died about 1580; he was professor
at various universities - of rhetoric at Valencia, of Greek at Zaragossa,
where he gave lectures, in which he explained the verses of Homer; he was
a proficient in Greek, ancient and modern, and it should be observed that,
in the passage which we are about to cite, he means himself by the learned
individual who held conversation with the Gitanos. (66) EL ESTUDIOSO CORTESANO
was reprinted at Alcala in 1587, from which edition we now copy.

'Who are the Gitanos? I answer; these vile people first began to show themselves
in Germany, in the year 1417, where they call them Tartars or Gentiles; in
Italy they are termed Ciani. They pretend that they come from Lower Egypt,
and that they wander about as a penance, and to prove this, they show letters
from the king of Poland. They lie, however, for they do not lead the life
of penitents, but of dogs and thieves. A learned person, in the year 1540,
prevailed with them, by dint of much persuasion, to show him the king's letter,
and he gathered from it that the time of their penance was already expired;
he spoke to them in the Egyptian tongue; they said, however, as it was a
long time since their departure from Egypt, they did not understand it; he
then spoke to them in the vulgar Greek, such as is used at present in the
Morea and Archipelago; SOME UNDERSTOOD IT, others did not; so that as all
did not understand it, we may conclude that the language which they use is
a feigned one, (67) got up by thieves for the purpose of concealing their
robberies, like the jargon of blind beggars.'

Still more abundant, however, than the mixture of Greek, still more abundant
than the mixture of Sclavonian, is the alloy in the Gypsy language, wherever
spoken, of modern Persian words, which circumstance will compel us to offer
a few remarks on the share which the Persian has had in the formation of
the dialects of India, as at present spoken.

The modern Persian, as has been already observed, is a daughter of the ancient
Zend, and, as such, is entitled to claim affinity with the Sanscrit, and
its dialects. With this language none in the world would be able to vie in
simplicity and beauty, had not the Persians, in adopting the religion of
Mahomet, unfortunately introduces into their speech an infinity of words
of the rude coarse language used by the barbaric Arab tribes, the immediate
followers of the warlike Prophet. With the rise of Islam the modern Persian
was doomed to be carried into India. This country, from the time of Alexander,
had enjoyed repose from external aggression, had been ruled by its native
princes, and been permitted by Providence to exercise, without control or
reproof, the degrading superstitions, and the unnatural and bloody rites
of a religion at the formation of which the fiends of cruelty and lust seem
to have presided; but reckoning was now about to be demanded of the accursed
ministers of this system for the pain, torture, and misery which they had
been instrumental in inflicting on their countrymen for the gratification
of their avarice, filthy passions, and pride; the new Mahometans were at
hand - Arab, Persian, and Afghan, with the glittering scimitar upraised,
full of zeal for the glory and adoration of the one high God, and the relentless
persecutors of the idol-worshippers. Already, in the four hundred and
twenty-sixth year of the Hegeira, we read of the destruction of the great
Butkhan, or image-house of Sumnaut, by the armies of the far-conquering Mahmoud,
when the dissevered heads of the Brahmans rolled down the steps of the gigantic
and Babel-like temple of the great image -

[Text which cannot be reproduced - Arabic?]

(This image grim, whose name was Laut,

Bold Mahmoud found when he took Sumnaut.)

It is not our intention to follow the conquests of the Mahometans from the
days of Walid and Mahmoud to those of Timour and Nadir; sufficient to observe,
that the greatest part of India was subdued, new monarchies established,
and the old religion, though far too powerful and widely spread to be extirpated,
was to a considerable extent abashed and humbled before the bright rising
sun of Islam. The Persian language, which the conquerors (68) of whatever
denomination introduced with them to Hindustan, and which their descendants
at the present day still retain, though not lords of the ascendant, speedily
became widely extended in these regions, where it had previously been unknown.
As the language of the court, it was of course studied and acquired by all
those natives whose wealth, rank, and influence necessarily brought them
into connection with the ruling powers; and as the language of the camp,
it was carried into every part of the country where the duties of the soldiery
sooner or later conducted them; the result of which relations between the
conquerors and conquered was the adoption into the popular dialects of India
of an infinity of modern Persian words, not merely those of science, such
as it exists in the East, and of luxury and refinement, but even those which
serve to express many of the most common objects, necessities, and ideas,
so that at the present day a knowledge of the Persian is essential for the
thorough understanding of the principal dialects of Hindustan, on which account,
as well as for the assistance which it affords in communication with the
Mahometans, it is cultivated with peculiar care by the present possessors
of the land.

No surprise, therefore, can be entertained that the speech of the Gitanos
in general, who, in all probability, departed from Hindustan long subsequent
to the first Mahometan invasions, abounds, like other Indian dialects, with
words either purely Persian, or slightly modified to accommodate them to
the genius of the language. Whether the Rommany originally constituted part
of the natives of Multan or Guzerat, and abandoned their native land to escape
from the torch and sword of Tamerlane and his Mongols, as Grellmann and others
have supposed, or whether, as is much more probable, they were a thievish
caste, like some others still to be found in Hindustan, who fled westward,
either from the vengeance of justice, or in pursuit of plunder, their speaking
Persian is alike satisfactorily accounted for. With the view of exhibiting
how closely their language is connected with the Sanscrit and Persian, we
subjoin the first ten numerals in the three tongues, those of the Gypsy according
to the Hungarian dialect. (69)

It would be easy for us to adduce a thousand instances, as striking as the
above, of the affinity of the Gypsy tongue to the Persian, Sanscrit, and
the Indian dialects, but we have not space for further observation on a point
which long since has been sufficiently discussed by others endowed with abler
pens than our own; but having made these preliminary remarks, which we deemed
necessary for the elucidation of the subject, we now hasten to speak of the
Gitano language as used in Spain, and to determine, by its evidence (and
we again repeat, that the language is the only criterion by which the question
can be determined), how far the Gitanos of Spain are entitled to claim connection
with the tribes who, under the names of Zingani, etc., are to be found in
various parts of Europe, following, in general, a life of wandering adventure,
and practising the same kind of thievish arts which enable those in Spain
to obtain a livelihood at the expense of the more honest and industrious
of the community.

The Gitanos of Spain, as already stated, are generally believed to be the
descendants of the Moriscos, and have been asserted to be such in printed
books. (71) Now they are known to speak a language or jargon amongst themselves
which the other natives of Spain do not understand; of course, then, supposing
them to be of Morisco origin, the words of this tongue or jargon, which are
not Spanish, are the relics of the Arabic or Moorish tongue once spoken in
Spain, which they have inherited from their Moorish ancestors. Now it is
well known, that the Moorish of Spain was the same tongue as that spoken
at present by the Moors of Barbary, from which country Spain was invaded
by the Arabs, and to which they again retired when unable to maintain their
ground against the armies of the Christians. We will, therefore, collate
the numerals of the Spanish Gitano with those of the Moorish tongue, preceding
both with those of the Hungarian Gypsy, of which we have already made use,
for the purpose of making clear the affinity of that language to the Sanscrit
and Persian. By this collation we shall at once perceive whether the Gitano
of Spain bears most resemblance to the Arabic, or the Rommany of other lands.

We believe the above specimens will go very far to change the opinion of
those who have imbibed the idea that the Gitanos of Spain are the descendants
of Moors, and are of an origin different from that of the wandering tribes
of Rommany in other parts of the world, the specimens of the two dialects
of the Gypsy, as far as they go, being so strikingly similar, as to leave
no doubt of their original identity, whilst, on the contrary, with the Moorish
neither the one nor the other exhibits the slightest point of similarity
or connection. But with these specimens we shall not content ourselves, but
proceed to give the names of the most common things and objects in the Hungarian
and Spanish Gitano, collaterally, with their equivalents in the Moorish Arabic;
from which it will appear that whilst the former are one and the same language,
they are in every respect at variance with the latter. When we consider that
the Persian has adopted so many words and phrases from the Arabic, we are
at first disposed to wonder that a considerable portion of these words are
not to be discovered in every dialect of the Gypsy tongue, since the Persian
has lent it so much of its vocabulary. Yet such is by no means the case,
as it is very uncommon, in any one of these dialects, to discover words derived
from the Arabic. Perhaps, however, the following consideration will help
to solve this point. The Gitanos, even before they left India, were probably
much the same rude, thievish, and ignorant people as they are at the present
day. Now the words adopted by the Persian from the Arabic, and which it
subsequently introduced into the dialects of India, are sounds representing
objects and ideas with which such a people as the Gitanos could necessarily
be but scantily acquainted, a people whose circle of ideas only embraces
physical objects, and who never commune with their own minds, nor exert them
but in devising low and vulgar schemes of pillage and deceit. Whatever is
visible and common is seldom or never represented by the Persians, even in
their books, by the help of Arabic words: the sun and stars, the sea and
river, the earth, its trees, its fruits, its flowers, and all that it produces
and supports, are seldom named by them by other terms than those which their
own language is capable of affording; but in expressing the abstract thoughts
of their minds, and they are a people who think much and well, they borrow
largely from the language of their religion - the Arabic. We therefore, perhaps,
ought not to be surprised that in the scanty phraseology of the Gitanos,
amongst so much Persian, we find so little that is Arabic; had their pursuits
been less vile, their desires less animal, and their thoughts less circumscribed,
it would probably have been otherwise; but from time immemorial they have
shown themselves a nation of petty thieves, horse-traffickers, and the like,
without a thought of the morrow, being content to provide against the evil
of the passing day.

We shall offer no further observations respecting the affinity of the Spanish
Gitano to the other dialects, as we conceive we have already afforded sufficient
proof of its original identity with them, and consequently shaken to the
ground the absurd opinion that the Gitanos of Spain are the descendants of
the Arabs and Moriscos. We shall now conclude with a few remarks on the present
state of the Gitano language in Spain, where, perhaps, within the course
of a few years, it will have perished, without leaving a vestige of its having
once existed; and where, perhaps, the singular people who speak it are likewise
doomed to disappear, becoming sooner or later engulfed and absorbed in the
great body of the nation, amongst whom they have so long existed a separate
and peculiar class.

Though the words or a part of the words of the original tongue still remain,
preserved by memory amongst the Gitanos, its grammatical peculiarities have
disappeared, the entire language having been modified and subjected to the
rules of Spanish grammar, with which it now coincides in syntax, in the
conjugation of verbs, and in the declension of its nouns. Were it possible
or necessary to collect all the relics of this speech, they would probably
amount to four or five thousand words; but to effect such an achievement,
it would be necessary to hold close and long intercourse with almost every
Gitano in Spain, and to extract, by various means, the peculiar information
which he might be capable of affording; for it is necessary to state here,
that though such an amount of words may still exist amongst the Gitanos in
general, no single individual of their sect is in possession of one-third
part thereof, nor indeed, we may add, those of any single city or province
of Spain; nevertheless all are in possession, more or less, of the language,
so that, though of different provinces, they are enabled to understand each
other tolerably well, when discoursing in this their characteristic speech.
Those who travel most are of course best versed in it, as, independent of
the words of their own village or town, they acquire others by intermingling
with their race in various places. Perhaps there is no part of Spain where
it is spoken better than in Madrid, which is easily accounted for by the
fact, that Madrid, as the capital, has always been the point of union of
the Gitanos, from all those provinces of Spain where they are to be found.
It is least of all preserved in Seville, notwithstanding that its Gitano
population is very considerable, consisting, however, almost entirely of
natives of the place. As may well be supposed, it is in all places best preserved
amongst the old people, their children being comparatively ignorant of it,
as perhaps they themselves are in comparison with their own parents. We are
persuaded that the Gitano language of Spain is nearly at its last stage of
existence, which persuasion has been our main instigator to the present attempt
to collect its scanty remains, and by the assistance of the press, rescue
it in some degree from destruction. It will not be amiss to state here, that
it is only by listening attentively to the speech of the Gitanos, whilst
discoursing amongst themselves, that an acquaintance with their dialect can
be formed, and by seizing upon all unknown words as they fall in succession
from their lips. Nothing can be more useless and hopeless than the attempt
to obtain possession of their vocabulary by inquiring of them how particular
objects and ideas are styled; for with the exception of the names of the
most common things, they are totally incapable, as a Spanish writer has observed,
of yielding the required information, owing to their great ignorance, the
shortness of their memories, or rather the state of bewilderment to which
their minds are brought by any question which tends to bring their reasoning
faculties into action, though not unfrequently the very words which have
been in vain required of them will, a minute subsequently, proceed inadvertently
from their mouths.

We now take leave of their language. When wishing to praise the proficiency
of any individual in their tongue, they are in the habit of saying, 'He
understands the seven jargons.' In the Gospel which we have printed in this
language, and in the dictionary which we have compiled, we have endeavoured,
to the utmost of our ability, to deserve that compliment; and at all times
it will afford us sincere and heartfelt pleasure to be informed that any
Gitano, capable of appreciating the said little works, has observed, whilst
reading them or hearing them read: It is clear that the writer of these books
understood